Yeah but how? You ask. The answer lies in pattern recognition and recreation.

As a child, we recognize that a waving hand with the sound of “bi” means someone is leaving. It is a pattern. By linking patterns together like departure with work or school means we shall see that person again. This is pattern recognition.

Of course, pattern recognition takes time and attention. Most of our schooling from preschool to PhD involves patterns recognition. Be it the multiplication table, periodic tables, or table of contents. And we associate various patterns to create our own meanings.

Sound rudimentary? perhaps. Our pattern of learning is now being applied to machine, as in machine learning. In fact, this is where machine has advantage over human. Machines do not get tired. They do not forget. And they can go 24 X 7. Think cell phone and Big Data.

But for us human, the fun comes from our sense of discovery. By linking different recognizable pieces together we find something new, something we did not know, a true sense of re-creation if you will.

And you don’t need a PhD to do this. Practical daily opportunities include the crossword puzzle, novels, or internet. So why not give it a try?